Vladimir Kryuchkov

Vladimir Alexandrovich Kryuchkov (29 February 1924-23 November 2007) was Chairman of the KGB from 1 October 1988 to 22 August 1991, succeeding Viktor Chebrikov. He was one of the leaders of the State Committee on the State of Emergency during the failed "August Coup" of 1991.

Biography
Vladimir Kryuchkov was born in Tsaritsyn, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union (now Volgograd, Russia) in 1924, and he joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1944. He embarked on a career in the Soviet justice system, and he later served in the diplomatic corps, becoming a pupil of Yuri Andropov. Kryuchkov joined the KGB in 1967 and headed the KGB's foreign intelligence branch from 1974 to 1988. During these years, the branch supported several communist, socialist, and anti-colonial movements across the world, and Kryuchkov also oversaw the KGB's penetration of Western intelligence agencies, acquiring valuable scientific and technical intelligence and perfecting techniques of disinformation and active measures. However, his directorate became plagued with defectors, and its advocacy for the Soviet-Afghan War led to a deterioration of the CPSU's relations with other communist parties. From 1988 to 1991, he served as the seventh chairman of the KGB, and he oversaw the creation of the State Committee on the State of Emergency to restore order to the USSR as it broke up. After the coup failed, he was imprisoned, but he was freed in a State Duma amnesty in 1994. He died in 2007.